Tag: bob menendez

Frank Lautenberg’s staff kind of sidles away from Bob Menendez.

I can understand why Frank Lautenberg’s staff would program this into the Senator.

Frank Lautenberg said today he was sorry to see his fellow Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, entangled in a controversy over trips he took to the Dominican Republic on the plane of a campaign contributor.

The contributor, Salomon Melgen, an eye doctor in West Palm Beach, Fla., is the subject of an FBI investigation. On Tuesday night and again Wednesday, agents searched his offices, although they have refused to disclose what they were looking for.

“If there are infractions as they are reported, it’s too bad,” Lautenberg told reporters.

After all, a suddenly-absent Robert Menendez would be most beneficial for Frank Lautenberg’s staff’s long-term employment prospects.

Via

Bob Menendez’s foreign underage prostitution story stubbornly not going away.

Background: just before the election a story broke alleging that Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey had taken advantage of the hospitality of one of his campaign contributors to go down to the Dominican Republic (via the aforementioned contributor’s private plane) and use the services of at least two prostitutes (one of whom may or may not have been underage).  Worse, he allegedly refused to pay said foreign partially-underaged hookers the full amount that Menendez allegedly promised to pay – and, let me note again this in passing: to patronize a prostitute is hardly a moral act.  But if you must do this, pay what you said that you were going to pay.  There is a difference between being uncouth, and being a cad. Continue reading Bob Menendez’s foreign underage prostitution story stubbornly not going away.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D, NJ) alleged to be involved in scandal with HOOKERS!

OK, yeah, let me explain something before we go any further.  I grew up in New Jersey, myself: and the word has never been ‘hookers’ to me.  It’s always been “HOOKERS!” – and pronounced, bizarrely enough, as if it’s being half-shouted by a Monmouth County Italian-American woman who’s been smoking for thirty years.

I’m sorry.  It’s just one of those things.

Anyway, Sen. Menendez might have gotten himself mixed up with some HOOKERS!:

For those without video access: basically, two Dominican Republic prostitutes have come forward to claim that the Senator paid for their services some time around Easter, 2012. Allegedly, the Senator only paid them $100 each of the $500 that they were promised (I think that they were only promised $500 in total). This supposedly happened in the Dominican Republic: the Daily Caller has traced the plane of a prominent Menendez donor – a plane used by the Senator on several occasions, in fact – which had flown up to a private airport convenient to Menendez, over to the compound where the alleged sex acts took place, and back to the United States at about the time that the alleged events occurred. And, if you’re wondering, the Senator had no official events at that time.
Continue reading Sen. Bob Menendez (D, NJ) alleged to be involved in scandal with HOOKERS!

The downticket implications of Obama losing the suburbs.

Spoiler warning: ‘mixed.’

Michael Barone has taken a look at two non-battleground states – New Jersey and Connecticut – and sees something interesting:

In three recent polls in heavily affluent suburban Connecticut, Obama leads Romney by only 52%-43%. He carried the state 61%-38%. Obama is running 9% behind his 2008 percentage; his 23% margin is now 9%. Polling in New Jersey, also heavily affluent suburban, is averaging 50%-40%, down from Obama’s 57%-42% in 2008. Neither state is a target state (though south Jersey gets Philadelphia TV, with any Pennsylvania-targeted ads) or likely to be one on these numbers. But if the apparent CT and NJ trends are happening in affluent suburbs in target states, assumptions based on 2008 benchmarks could prove to be unjustified.

Barone goes on to note a what he (and I) consider to be too-good-to-be-true poll of Cook County, IL; but even if Cook County is not in play it still remains unlikely that Obama will make his 2008 numbers there, either, which is largely Michael Barone’s point.  But let’s go back to CT & NJ for a moment. Specifically, the Senate races in both. Continue reading The downticket implications of Obama losing the suburbs.